Comments and Steps

      1 Comment on Comments and Steps

I made a couple of changes this past week. The first concerns my blog. I have added an extra layer of authentication to the comments by requiring that anyone who comments must first registers with the site.   The reason is because I was “found” by a spambot last night, and OMG, what a hassle. 😮  It’s honestly kind of ridiculous, because my blog only gets about 30 hits a week (my life just isn’t that exciting! 😉 ).   However, it seems the spambots don’t care about traffic, because when I woke up this morning, I had new 258 emails letting me know I had comments to moderate. OMFG!! 😮 To top it off, my new Garmin has Bluetooth capability that shows me notifications from my phone, including emails. As I did my run this morning, my watch was continually buzzing at me with all the emails I was getting from Word Press.  It was driving me crazy, so I just figured I’d put a hard stop to it by requiring registration.  

I don’t get a lot of comments anyway, which is perfectly fine, because I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I completely understand if nobody comments right now, because registration is kind of a pain in the butt.  I probably won’t keep it that way for too long, but I’m hoping that it will get the spambots to leave me alone.  This is one of the reasons why I’m glad my site is as small as it is; I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if my site had more than 30 followers! 😮

So the next change I made actually has to do with weight loss. One of the things that Weight Watchers allows you to do is count your steps and swap them for food. You can earn quite a few Fit Points if you take a lot of steps, which I actually do.  At my job, I have to park pretty far away, and it’s a long walk to my desk. Then, the walk to the bathroom is also pretty far, and I do it quite a few times a day, since I drink lots of water. And finally, I do a lot of walking and running back-and-forth whenever there’s a hockey game (because I’m taking pictures). On a day when I’m not at home all day, it’s pretty easy for me to get in 6000 or 7000 steps beyond my runs, and sometimes much more. That adds up to Fit Points, which adds up to food!

Since I started back on Weight Watchers last month, I was counting my steps (via the activity tracker on my iPhone, subtracting out the steps for my runs, of course), and then logging them in the WW app and swapping them for food. Since I haven’t really lost any weight since that first week, I decided that it would probably be in my best interest to stop counting all the steps.  On the one hand, it encouraged me to actually get up and move more, such as at work, where I would usually take a brisk walk around the building whenever I’d get up for a bathroom break. But on the other hand, I think I was taking it a little too far…I had a few days where I earned something like seven extra activity points for all the steps that I did, and that’s probably not completely accurate. 

I do still track my steps to make sure that I get in the 3000 extra steps that weight watchers requires you to get before it will count any of your “real” activity, but after that, I just let the steps rack up and don’t worry about them. I did TRY to stay more active outside of my runs last week; I just didn’t eat more food because of it. 

This week, I had a lot of activity, even without the steps. It was week eight of half-marathon training, with a lot of miles to do. I ran 4 to 5 miles each day except for Thursday, and then Saturday was the big run: 12 miles, and not just 12 plain old miles, but 12 miles that included nine miles of tempo intervals. Ugh!!! Those are the intervals where you run a quarter-mile at tempo, and then three quarters at easy run pace. Doing that for 9 miles is not a lot of fun. Especially the way that my running buddies and I did it on Saturday: it was supposed to be a 2 mile warm-up, 9 miles of intervals, and then 1 mile of cool down, but Toddra had to leave early for yet another basketball game. We did the three easy miles with her, and then Ann, Jen, and I headed back out for the 9 miles. By about the fifth one, we were all kind of grumpy. 😉 But we didn’t give up! We did get to see a pretty sunrise. 

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We pushed on until the 9th and final tempo interval, so happy that it was our last, but right at that point, the skies got dark, and the next thing we knew, it was sleeting on us, with cold driving wind our face.

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That was rough. But then we were done and in another three quarters of a mile we were back at the start, a total of 12 miles complete.

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I’m not going to lie, I promptly went home and took a three hour nap. 😉  After that, I had laundry and other chores to do, and the next thing I knew, it was getting close to time to leave for Jamie’s hockey game. I did manage to eat my coffee and English muffin (my favorite breakfast), but other than that, I didn’t eat. 😮 I splurged on a chocolate chip cookie at the rink, and then after the game (which they unfortunately lost), some of the parents headed out to Buffalo Wild Wings. One of the other moms and I treated ourselves to a sangria.

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It was really good! So good, in fact, that I had a second one. 😉 I only drink half of that one, though, because by that time my food had come, and I don’t like to drink when I eat. I ordered the Mediterranean salad:

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It was all vegetables and chicken, with some Kalamata olives thrown on top. I can only handle about one of those olives, because they’re pretty strong, so I pushed the rest aside, but I did enjoy the tzatziki dressing. I also had some freshly made pita chips, and I enjoyed quite a bit of those with a little bit of hummus. 

By the time I was done, because I had slept so much and then not eaten much, I still had almost all of my Fit Points from my 12 mile run left over. Say what? 😮 My running friend Renée even asked me the next day at church what I had spent all those calories on, and I kind of chuckled and said, “Umm,  a chocolate chip cookie?” 

I made up for it a little bit the next day, eating about nine extra points. Still, I ended the week with 11 activity points left over, and that didn’t include any activity beyond my running. Considering the extra activity I’d done this week, and my change in not counting steps, I was feeling pretty good about my weigh in. And…

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Dammit. I know, I know, losing 2/10 of a pound is certainly better than gaining, but I was really hoping that I’d have a good loss this week. It bummed me out, but I’m just going to keep at it. Here’s my calories versus smart points chart. The blue line is the zero line, which I want to stay above on any given day.

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Look at those extra calories/points on Saturday, lol!  You can tell my non-exercise days–those are the ones where I dip below the line. 😮

And now it’s onto next week! I’ll be getting up extra early tomorrow, because even though it’s a step back way, I’m still going to put in an extra mile or so…have to earn my paczki!! 😀

Thanks for reading!

1 thought on “Comments and Steps

  1. Ann

    Hi!! I’m inspired by you as always 😀! I think I’d like to look into the WW point/activity tracking. Still fighting this nasty bug that cut my run short on Saturday. Ick! Need to feel better to get through this weeks training schedule!!

    Reply

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